Art After Hours - The Greats

Overview

If you can find a better date than hearing talks and seeing live music over cheeky vinos in an art gallery, we'd love to hear about it.

This spring and summer, the Art Gallery of New South Wales’s Art After Hours program is extending the The Greats love to live music. Each Wednesday night, AGNSW will be brimming with after-hours shenanigans for free in the Gallery’s entrance court, in conjunction with the epic exhibition from the National Galleries of Scotland.

Each week will see a different lineup of art-inspired happenings in the Gallery, from comedy to talks and music. Want to get a serious art education? Comedian Hannah Gadsby will be getting serious about art history. Apparently Gadsby has a secret identity as a 'serious art nerd'. Every week, she'll be putting on her serious art scarf and delving into the great eras of Western art history, tackling a different theme each week with her serious art brain. According to the Gallery, "Please note, this is not stand-up comedy. IT WILL BE VERY SERIOUS. It will be very silly. SERIOUSLY."

If you're a snuggle-into-a-dark-cinema type of person, check out the European Cinema Classics series — bi-weekly showings of iconic motion pictures from all across the continent. Held on select Wednesday and Sundays between now and the first week of February, the program features ten films in total, spanning more than five decades in European film history. Highlights include Roman Polanski’s violent adaption of Macbeth, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s biblical drama The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Werner Herzog’s medieval epic Aguirre: the Wrath of God and Ingmar Bergman’s undisputed masterpiece The Seventh Seal.

If you're an earlybird who can't wait to bust out of the office and head to the Gallery, each Wednesday at 5.30pm will see exhibition talks — the 'masterpiece series' will see one expert a week discuss, in detail, one work in The Greats exhibition they're particularly fond of; rom Dr Michael Hill from the National Art School discussing Georges Seurat’s La Luzerne, Saint-Denis to artist Michelle Hiscock picking apart Camille Corot’s Ville-d’Avray: entrance to the wood.

Art After Hours runs till 10pm every Wednesday night, except December 16, 23 and 30 — the Gallery closes at 5pm then.

While you're there, why not check out the The Greats? Here's six artworks not to miss from the exhibition to start.

By Shannon Connellan and Tom Clift.